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About MDRC

Johanna Walter serves as data manager on various evaluations, including the TANF-SSI Disability Transition Project and Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ. Walter has extensive experience with administrative records from a variety of providers, such as state welfare agencies, community colleges, the National Student Clearinghouse, health care management systems, and the National Directory of New Hires, as well as with survey and cost data. She has managed data collection, as well as data construction and analysis activities for a number of projects. Walter has also authored implementation and benefit-cost analyses for MDRC reports and papers.

MDRC Publications

This benefit-cost analysis examines an Indianapolis program that offered subsidized jobs, case management, peer mentorship, and other support to former prisoners. The program reduced incarcerations and increased employment and earnings among participants, and the overall benefits to society from these effects outweighed program costs.

The Kansas Child Support Savings Initiative encourages parents to make deposits into tax-advantaged college savings plans in return for matching reductions in their child support debts. This report describes two randomized controlled trials conducted by Kansas and MDRC to test different methods of outreach and engagement.

This report presents implementation and interim impact findings from a random assignment evaluation of STEP Forward, a subsidized employment program in San Francisco serving a diverse group of low-income job seekers. In the first year, STEP Forward boosted employment and earnings, which suggests that participants obtained better jobs.

This demonstration is testing seven enhanced transitional jobs programs that offer temporary, subsidized jobs and comprehensive support to people recently released from prison and unemployed parents behind in child support payments.

Both Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) may serve low-income individuals with disabilities. Yet the two programs’ differences in approach and structure pose challenges to coordinating services. This report describes how TANF agencies interact with local SSA offices and documents the extent to which adult TANF recipients are connected with the SSI system.

A telephonic care management program increased the use of mental health services by Medicaid recipients with depression while the program was running, but it did not help individuals sustain treatment after the intervention ended. The program did not reduce depression on average, nor did it have any effect on employment outcomes.

The British ERA program’s distinctive combination of post-employment advisory support and financial incentives was designed to help low-income individuals who entered work sustain employment and advance in the labor market. It produced short-term earnings gains for two target groups but sustained increases in employment and earnings and positive benefit-cost results for the third target group, long-term unemployed individuals.

A telephonic care management program increased the use of mental health services by Medicaid recipients with depression, although that effect faded over time. The program did not reduce depression on average, but it did reduce the number of people who suffered from very severe depression.

This report presents a preliminary analysis of the cost of operating Britain's Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) demonstration, which is being evaluated though a large-scale randomised control trial. This assessment of costs will become an important element of the full cost-benefit analysis to be presented in future ERA reports.

How best to help people move from welfare to work — particularly whether an employment-focused approach or an education-focused approach is more effective — has been a subject of long-standing debate. This report summary, which describes the long-term effects of 11 different mandatory welfare-to-work programs for single parents and their children, takes a major step toward resolving this debate.

Many noncustodial parents do not pay their full child support obligations and therefore accumulate child support debt. At the same time, many children receiving child support assistance have little or no savings to help pay for their higher education.

While welfare agencies and the federal disability system have common goals of supporting people with disabilities and helping them become more independent, the two systems often have diverging interests as well.

Until recently, employment policy in the United Kingdom had been focused principally on helping people who had lost their jobs to find work. Although some government-sponsored measures were available to help those on the margins of employment retain their jobs and improve their earnings, there had been less support for people once they had found jobs.